Carol Miers wrote up her notes on the speech by health expert Richard Vize at Help Me Investigate Health’s #reportinghealth event – we’ve reproduced them below with permission:

“GPs tend to be self employed business people, they hate NHS bureaucracy and hate being told what to do, now they are taken away from patient contact, they have to work on committees, they have their business interests compromised, they have become a cog in the bureaucracy and are subject to control from the Department of Health.”

This, added Richard Vize, opens up health reporting because there is now oversight from the Health and Wellbeing board which – given that GPs are vocal – will bring in an area of openness and debate. Continue reading →

If you want to get an overview of the different parties involved in the new health system and their roles – including some new players as well as old players with new responsibilities – a recent report from the National Quality Board‘s (NQB) is worth a look.

Seventeen NHS hospitals have dangerously low numbers of nurses – Telegraph – The hospitals, many of them busy district generals, were issued with warnings by the Care Quality Commission after its latest inspections, the body has disclosed.
Each was told it did not have enough staff “to keep people safe and meet their health and welfare needs” — the standard every part of the health service must meet.

If you’re curious about what incentives might be guiding the new health system, this update from the NHS Commissioning Board provides some essential context:

“Financial incentives (quality premium) will be paid to all CCGs that improve or achieve on four national measures and three locally-agreed measures, set with Health and Wellbeing Boards. National measures include: potential years of life lost from causes considered amenable to healthcare; avoidable emergency admissions; the friends and family test; and incidence of healthcare associated infections.”

The ‘friends and family test’ is about whether individuals would recommend services to friends – in other words, a form of customer satisfaction. You can read concerns about it here, and analysis here.

Following previous posts about how Freedom of Information requests are being handled during a period where responsibilities are passed from one part of the health service (primary care trusts) to another (clinical commissioning groups – CCGs), we’ve been working with the wonderful FOI Directory to compile a full list of email addresses for the PCT handling FOI requests for each CCG in England.

This table assumes that FOI requests are being handled by the PCT. In some cases the CCG may be ready to process FOI requests themselves. If so, the PCT should be able to inform you when you submit your FOI request.

Here’s the list – if you find anything that needs correcting or updating, please let us know. Continue reading →